Business reporter

Inside the mind of the white collar criminal – in Saturday's BusinessDay

White collar criminals, traditionally regarded as getting an easier ride from the justice system, are going to jail more often and for longer, sentencing statistics show.

Victorian Sentencing Advisory Council statistics show that in 2003-04 the proportion of people guilty of obtaining a financial advantage by deception who were immediately sent to jail fell to just 26 per cent.

However, by 2011-12 half the people sentenced for the offence were sent straight to jail.

The average jail term imposed has also risen, from one year and six months in 2001-02 to two years and three months in 2011-12.

Meanwhile, in NSW, since 2008 more than 60 per cent of offenders convicted of obtaining a benefit by deception have been sent to jail, with the rate hitting as much as 74 per cent in 2011 before falling back to 63 per cent last year.

The increasingly severe sentences come as psychologists reveal the image of the embezzler as a workplace psychopath is misplaced.

Instead, white collar criminals are hard-working perfectionists who see themselves as "very moral".

The surprising result has emerged from a study of 30 inmates locked up for stealing between $100,000 and $22 million from their employer, conducted by Monash University psychologists David Curnow and James Ogloff.

"They [psychopaths] may well bully people, they may well be fairly ruthless with other staff – they don't tend to steal the money, that's something that this group does," Dr Curnow said.